Lawn mowing is a task that some people enjoy, but many would just as soon spend that time doing something else in summer. (Count me among the latter.) The technology for autonomous mowing machines that stay within a wire perimeter has been around for a while, and sales of electric Roomba-like grass-cutters have surged in… Read More
Category: Agritechnica
Vervaet’s hydro-trike slurry spreader was developed in collaboration with contractors nearly twenty years ago. As its name suggests, it’s a three- or five-wheeled, self-propelled machine, which offers up to 20,000 litres in capacity. And, even the five-wheeled option is built with soil health in mind. “So each wheel has its own track to minimize soil… Read More
AGCO’s new generation of combine harvester made its first public appearance at Agritechnica in Germany last month. The result of the company’s largest ever product development project, the graphite-coloured IDEAL combine will be sold under AGCO’s Challenger, Fendt and Massey Ferguson brands. “We started from a clean sheet of paper. It’s a complete new combine…and… Read More
There are many ways to harvest crops, from pick-up to straight-cut headers. But, have you ever considered a stripper header? Designed largely for cereals, grass seed and rice farming, a stripper header has rotating teeth that lift the grain into the combine, essentially leaving everything else in the field. This has multiple potential benefits: The… Read More
Automation is not be the only innovative path the agricultural machinery world is headed down. Fendt unveiled an all-electric tractor — the e100 Vario — this fall, and had it on display at Agritechnica in Hanover, Germany. “We’ve removed the diesel engine and the diesel tank and have installed an electric motor with a 100kWh… Read More
A robot that zaps unwanted organisms with lasers may describe a character in a science fiction plot, but in reality, it’s a technological response to farming with high labour costs. The Jäti is a battery-powered autonomous crawler built by a pair of German companies that is designed to identify weeds and destroy them with laser… Read More
We’ve read headlines about a future with robots in the field and witnessed the unveiling of a few self-driving prototypes at farm shows over the past few years, but there probably hasn’t been a single event that collected as many of these concepts and products as Agritechnica in Hanover, Germany last week. The innovation in… Read More
A soil sensor that can detect compaction from above the ground in real-time is enabling a concept described as “variable depth tillage” for targeting compacted layers. The Topsoil Mapper made by Austria-based Geoprospectors is an example of a real-time sensor allowing farmers to account for variability as their tractor passes through a field, rather than… Read More
Landmines and flying bullets are certainly not a concern when driving a tractor in many parts of the world, but there are places where this is a real risk. With a matte military brown colour, bulletproof glass and armored steel, the ReboRack tractor stands in stark contrast to the rest of the shiny metal and… Read More
If you were to see a New Holland tractor equipped with NHDrive, you might think it looks fairly typical of the machines of today. But beyond its stylish blue and silver exterior is a fully autonomous, unmanned vehicle. NHDrive was developed by CNH Industrial in collaboration with Utah-based Autonomous Solutions Incorporated. It allows tractors to… Read More